“What a shit storm,” Holdren said.
“Think they got out alive?” Romax asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Holdren took the badly chewed cigar from his mouth and tossed it onto the snow. “With the way their luck has been going, I’d guess they’re already out of here. I don’t understand how anyone can stay one jump ahead of us. I thought for sure we had them at the house, but they responded as if they knew we were coming.”
Romax shook his head slowly. He admired the tenacity of Blalock. The man was acting alone and yet staying ahead of them. Why had Blalock ever left the government? “I suspect its Blalock. We know his military background, and although the CIA won’t talk about him, we know he must have worked for them for at least three years.”
“Yeah, but I worked for them for ten years, and I don’t think I could have been as lucky as this guy. Well, there’s nothing to be done until we find out what happened here. If it was Blalock and Maxwell, then who were they fighting?”
“I’ve been wondering about that myself. You know, there was a report that two bodies were found in San Francisco,” Romax said.
“So?”
“The NCIX report stated they were suspected Japanese External Trade Organization agents.”
Holdren’s eyes narrowed. “JETRO is on to this? Christ, who else is involved? This is getting way out of hand. Do they think Blalock killed them?”
“They apparently didn’t make the connection, or at least they hadn’t as of yesterday. It didn’t sound like his style.”
“Oh, why is that?”
“They were garroted.”
Holdren cursed under his breath and turned to the driver. “Morgan, round up whoever is in charge and get them over here, then get our personnel to check the area. I want to know who belongs to that plane and I want IDs on each and every body. ASAP! Look for witnesses and any sign of them. With this much excitement, someone must have seen something.”
“Yes sir,” Morgan said. He trotted off toward the nearest fire crew.
“Romax, get on the radio and see if we have a location on their transmissions.”
“Sure, what are you going to be doing?”
Holdren studied the billowing flames. “Me? I’m going to find some marshmallows.”
***
John lay on his back, staring up at a tall column of orange and black flames that stank of jet fuel and burning insulation. He watched the flames and marveled at their intensity, until he realized his face was nearly parboiled. He rolled over and lifted himself to his hands and knees. He could no longer feel the localized pain of his destroyed ear, injured shoulder, or cut side. Those pains were lost in the myriad pains of bruised and torn flesh.
Forcing himself to his feet, John swayed in the waves of heat. A few hundred yards away, past the flaming portion of jet, the hangar burned with a lesser intensity. All around him was bare earth, still damp from melted snow. He checked himself, found nothing broken, and found that his handgun was still holstered beneath his armpit. He turned toward the eight-foot high, chain-link fence. There was no way he was going to climb it, he had enough trouble standing. To his right, the night was filled with approaching rescue and fire vehicles, to his left were the bright lights of the distant main terminal. He was still disoriented from events, but he thought that the hangar where he’d left Caitlin was somewhere down that way.
He turned left.
John walked about fifty feet and was just starting to get some kind of stability in his stride when he saw the metal case. He stopped next to it and stared down.
“Well, looky looky. What have we here?”
It was the helmet case. The one he’d thrown into the throat of the jet’s port engine. It was beat up, singed along one side, but still intact, and still latched. The intake guards had kept it from being shattered among the spinning turbine blades and, apparently, it had been thrown clear when the rear section of the Learjet broke up.
John bent and fell. The air whooshed out of his lungs. He lay still for a moment, and then used both hands to push himself back to his feet. When he bent to pick up the case again, he found himself sprawled beside it on the slushy earth once more.
“Son of a …”
He gripped the case’s handle in his left hand and lurched erect.
It took him a few seconds to reorient his position, and then started forward. He reached pavement, an access road. It ran between a row of warehouses and the fence. In the distance, he thought he recognized the Rocky Air Freight hangar.
Caitlin was still unconscious, or he would have been able to reach her over the egg. She should be safe, but eventually Holdren’s men or the police would search every nook and cranny. Then they’d find her.
John moved into a trot.
A hundred yards later, he braked to a halt. For a moment, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Resting against the fence, in a shallow ditch between two warehouses, was his rented Cherokee.
He walked toward it, suspicious that it was some kind of bizarre trap. The headlights pointed down into the snow-filled ditch and were hardly visible. Closer, he saw the driver’s door was
